(Note: If any prospective clients are reading this in, say, Tulsa, Oklahoma— don’t let our reluctance to travel keep you from contacting us! We’ll still fly a long way for the right job.)

Anyway, back to Graceland. This is actually a pretty exciting project for us, in that it’s a departure from our typical way of working, and as a result we don’t mind a day’s worth of travel for this one.

Usually we work in one of two ways: either we manage and execute a soup-to-nuts Web site redesign, where we handle everything from message development to design to CMS programming to copywriting (in collaboration with our clients, of course); or we work with clients with a CMS already in place, and our engagement is limited to strategy, design, information architecture and template buildout.

The job with Graceland is different. Their director of creative services, Steve Edwards, really believes that he has a team that can do the work of redesigning and rebuilding the Graceland site themselves; he says they’ve got a lot of talent, some great ideas, and plenty of enthusiasm. What they do need is a roadmap— a burst of energy, a plan for information architecture, and some processes and strategies for getting it all done. And that’s where we come in.

Over the next two days, Tonya and I are going to meet with virtually everyone at Graceland with a stake in the redesign process: admissions, athletics, deans, students, faculty, alumni, development, and of course Web staff. We’ll share some of our experiences and ideas, but in this visit, we’re mostly there to be sponges— to give the community a chance to put all its concerns on the table and see what’s out there, and on our end, to learn as much about Graceland as possible.

Then we go back to the West Coast and crunch all that data, turning it into reports, strategic recommendations, meeting notes and executive summaries. We produce an information architecture, some content mapping and story ideas, and some proposed design fundamentals. Then we return (either both of us or just me, not sure yet) and present all that to the community. We sit down with the Web staff and plan it all out. And then we’re done! And it’s up to Graceland to take it from there.

This arrangement should work out great on both sides. For Graceland, it lets them use the resources they currently have, and get some strategic direction for a fraction of the cost of a redesign; for us, it lets us offer our services more quickly, and it helps us sketch out a model of collaborative consulting that I think is going to be increasingly common as we go forward.

Tonya has arrived! So away I go. By the way, here’s what it looks like to land in Des Moines:

The video’s a little jumpy because I was trying to hide my use of an electrical device from the flight attendants.